Wednesday 17th of June 2026

why a full-blown bullshitting trump was a necessity for america....

 

CRASS, BOMBASTIC, DEVIOUS, CLOWNING, PUSHY, IDIOTIC AND MANY OTHER UNFLATTERING EPITHETS DEFINE TRUMP — DONALD J TRUMP... DONALD IS THE RESULTING BOIL ON THE ARSE OF AMERICA AFTER YEARS OF UNDERLYING INFECTION... IT HAS THREATENED TO TAKE THE ENTIRE WORLD WITH ITS DISEASE....

BUT TRUMP CAME TO POWER AFTER A LONG LINE OF AMERICAN DECEIT AND DISASTROUS FOREIGN POLICY LED BY THE AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM OF THE 1990S... TO NAME A FEW CRAPPY OF THESE AMERICAN LEADERS, NIXON, BUSH SENIOR, CLINTON, BUSH, OBAMA, TRUMP, BIDEN, THEN BACK TO TRUMP....

AMERICA IS A GREAT COUNTRY, WITH INVENTIONS, OPPORTUNITIES AND  NAVEL-GAZING UNEQUALLED [EXCEPT BY THE FRENCH, THE GERMANS AND THE POMS]— FULL OF HARD-WORKING PEOPLE WHO RESENT THE LAZY BUMS ON WELFARE — BUT LED BY IDIOTS, MORONS OPPORTUNISTS AND PSYCHOPATHS TAKEN FROM THE CLASS OF SUPER-CASH. ONE WONDERS HOW SO.... HERE WE GO WITH ONE SAMPLE:

 

The Obama Center is a Monument to the More Effective Evil

Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

 

Barack Obama bailed out the banks, deported millions, and devastated nations and millions of people through wars of aggression. The $850 million Obama Center is a monument to his role as the “more effective evil” in U.S. politics.

 

Barack Obama does not carry our burden, in addition to other burdens. He in fact promises to lift white-people-as-a-whole’s burden, the burden of having to listen to these very specific and historical black complaints, to deal with the legacies of slavery. That is his promise to them. That is what allowed him to amass huge, huge numbers of white votes. And he will amass larger and larger percentages of black votes now that black folks see that white folks will vote for Barack Obama.” – Glen Ford, January 9, 2008  

 

The Obama Center, Barack Obama’s oligarch funded monument to himself, cost a grand total of $850 million to build. The ability to raise such a huge amount of money tells much of the story of the Obama presidency. Barack Obama, like all other presidents, was beholden to the ruling class and accordingly carried out all of their directives, which is what one might expect. In return, presidents are paid off upon leaving office with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates donating $25 million each to the Obama Foundation to build the Obama Center. Their largess is an indicator of what Obama did so well. He very skillfully marketed himself as a progressive while breaking fundraising records with a $750 million war chest haul in his 2008 campaign. Glen Ford described the contradictions as, “Goldman Sachs and the anti-war movement being on the same page.” 

Black people are still besotted by the former president who has now been out of office since January 2017. Living through a second Donald Trump administration plays a large role in the continued love relationship. The often ecstatic feelings about Obama’s presence were crushed when the man who carried out the “birther” campaign questioning his U.S. citizenship succeeded him and even returned after being impeached, convicted of a felony, and found liable in a civil case alleging a sexual assault.

Trump has been relentless in pushing his programs which range from mass deportations and restrictions on legal immigration, imposing tariffs that hurt U.S. businesses, joining the U.S. military with Israel’s, kidnapping the president of Venezuela, attempting another regime change project in Iran, destroying the inadequate social safety net, and carrying out a deadly siege against Cuba. 

But if one looks at Obama we see much that is the same. Obama was the deporter in chief, setting a record with deportations exceeding all of his predecessors. He carried out a bloody regime change against Libya, killing its president and thousands of other people and displacing millions more. He began another such plan against Syria, which two more presidents expanded upon until jihadists proxies took over that country as well. He presided over a U.S. led coup against Ukraine and led the effort to undo a United Nations approved Minsk Agreement peace process and in so doing led Joe Biden to instigate a now four-year long war. Trump is making good on finishing the agendas started by his predecessors.

As for the safety net, no one should forget Obama’s efforts at a “grand bargain” with republicans, putting everything on the proverbial chopping block table, including social security. He said as much during his first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012: “You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.” For the previous two years he had pursued but been spurned by congressional republicans. Black Agenda Report explained, “We can only hope that the Republicans are so consumed with destroy-Obama fervor that they reject his entreaties to bipartisan collaboration, and rush to gridlock.” The attack on the safety net would have begun with Obama instead of Trump, had republicans not been so insistent on obstructing for the sake of “white nationalist triumphalism.” 

Now Obama, ever the smooth talking, shape shifting, neo-liberal has erected a monument. But to what? This center is technically not a presidential library. Presidential libraries hold archives on-site which are maintained by the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA). NARA is digitizing Obama’s papers but those will be held in Maryland, not at the Obama Center in Chicago. 

Valerie Jarrett, Obama factotum for life and Obama Foundation CEO, explained the difference thusly: “The advantages of having everything in one location might be fun for people who like to sift through the papers. We would much rather have a Chicago Public Library on our site than filling it up with a bunch of papers.” Sifting through papers is what makes a presidential library a library but the Obama center is basically a privately funded vanity project and not the historical archive that it ought to be. Bunches of papers be damned.

And what of the Chicago Black community? How will they fare after the Center is completed? A headline in the Chicago Sun-Times tells the story: “As Airbnbs explode around the Obama Center, housing advocates say affordable units are disappearing.” The man still beloved by most Black people is accelerating gentrification. Airbnb short term rentals are declining in the rest of Chicago but increasing in the area near the Center. Through its Community Tourism Prep Sessions the Obama Center is, among other things, helping homeowners become Airbnb operators. “Helping local residents earn extra income by sharing their homes with Obama Presidential Center visitors. Hosted in partnership with Airbnb, this session will give residents the information they need to welcome guests to their home, use the Airbnb platform, and champion their neighborhood.” Higher rents and housing shortages are the inevitable result of Airbnb proliferation. Black people struggling to maintain their properties can keep them if they engage in accelerating the loss of housing stock for the entire community.

Black Agenda Report was always in the forefront of Obama critique. This columnist along with co-founders Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon and other contributors did not shrink from practicing real journalism even as others changed their politics and succumbed to Obamamania. While the hackneyed phrase “lesser evil” was promoted in order to excuse the misdeeds of the Democratic Party in general and the Obama administration in particular, Black Agenda Report responded by pointing out that the first Black president was not a lesser evil at all. He was the more effective evil:

“He has been more effective in Evil-Doing than Bush in terms of protecting the citadels of corporate power, and advancing the imperial agenda. He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks – just as he hired himself out to do.

That was always Wall Street’s expectation of Obama, and his promise to them. That’s why they gave him far more money in 2008 than they gave John McCain. They were buying Obama futures on the electoral political market – and they made out like bandits.

They invested in Obama to protect them from harm, as a hedge against the risk of systemic disaster caused by their own predations. And, it was a good bet, a good deal. It paid out in the tens of trillions of dollars.

If you believe that what Wall Street does is Evil, then Obama’s service to Wall Street is Evil, and there is nothing lesser about it.”

The Obama Center is full of beautiful art and, as Jarret points out, hosts a public library branch, in addition to a basketball court, community spaces, digitized documents, and all of the amenities that one would expect to see in an $850 million spend. Millions of people are already excited and planning to travel to Chicago to see the Center after its June 19, 2026 public opening.

Yes, the opening will be held on Juneteenth, a holiday which was once a people’s celebration with deep meaning for Black history. It now has the dubious distinction of becoming a federal holiday that was created for the express purpose of quieting Black political demands during the Biden administration. Any righteous significance was sacrificed on the altar of political cynicism, which makes the choice of a date for the Obama Center opening all the more revealing but not in the way in which Barack Obama intended.

The collective memory of Barack Obama will likely remain in a positive light. After all, h

e doesn’t wear orange makeup, fall asleep, show signs of dementia, or destroy the refugee program in favor of white South Africans who aren’t really refugees. But he is not a friend to the Black people who love him so much. He bailed out the banks, but not the victims of the housing bubble. He celebrated Ramadan at the white house but made war on Muslim nations. Perhaps it is just as well that he built a theme park in his honor instead of a real presidential library. At last Barack Obama provides truth in advertising.

https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/15/the-obama-center-is-a-monument-to-the-more-effective-evil/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

do not panic.....

 

Nate Bear for Do Not Panic 

This will be looked back on as the year in which American power, hard and soft, entered into accelerated collapse.

The World Cup is, in so many ways, a distraction from the war, mass murder and genocide inflicted by the empire and its proxies, but it has signalled the further fracturing of the soft power which has been integral to maintaining the myth of benign American empire.

The last four World Cup hosts – South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar – used the event to bolster their soft power by doing everything possible to present an outward-looking, friendly face to the world. Russia, for example, waived all visa requirements for fans to enter the country, made long distance train transport between host cities free, and also made all local transit, from buses to subways, free.

The United States, by contrast, has used the opportunity to bare its imperialist, capitalist teeth.

It has outright travel bans on citizens of four countries playing at the tournament, has rejected fans and fan groups from countries around the world, denied visas to players and has banned referees from entering. Rather than using the moment, as past hosts have done, to repair images and restore reputations, the US has used the moment to showcase its essential imperialism. Rather than use the World Cup to defy critical narratives about who they are, the US has used it to reaffirm: yes, this is exactly who we are.

On the capitalist front, it has used the opportunity to showcase another favoured American tradition. Grift. New Jersey Transit, for example, has hiked a return ticket from Penn Station in Manhattan to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, to $100 from a normal price of $12.90. The Massachusetts Transportation Bay Authority has priced return tickets from Boston to Gillette Stadium at $80 from the usual event-day price of $20. Other cities have enacted similar price hikes.

Every preconception about American greed has been validated, every assumption confirmed.

This fracturing of American soft power at the World Cup has been on full show for the globe to see, and it is all wonderfully self-inflicted. American leaders are capitalists and imperialists to their bone marrow. And I don’t just mean Trump, Hegseth and the MAGA crew. Do you hear complaints from Democrats about the entry bans, about the travel prices? In some cases Democratic cities are the ones grifting. Mamdani, to his credit, has been a lone critical voice. But still, New York under his and Kathy Hochul’s leadership isn’t offering free transit around the city, or to the MetLife stadium, for visiting fans.

The World Cup has perfectly encapsulated the venal spirit of the United States.

Ego, arrogance and hubris, undergirded by ideologies of capitalism and imperialism, have converged to create exactly the kind of experience they were always bound to create.

American disregard for soft power, its inability to set aside ideologies, even minimally, in order to boost its image, is underpinned by the fallacy of American hard power. American leaders, pumped up on militarism and nationalism, addicted to the action movie star aesthetic, care nothing for soft power because they believe hard power is the only type of power they need to dominate the globe.

But this misconception is coming undone in real time.

If the reports are to be believed, the US and Iran will sign a peace deal this week, and the signing will seal, regardless of its contents, a definitive and historic defeat for the United States.

The US and Israel attacked Iran explicitly to effect regime change and end the Islamic republic. They failed. However else this deal is dressed up by Trump and legacy media, this is the stone cold fact. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz simply reanimates a status quo that existed before the attack. But the signing of this deal is anything but a return to the status quo. Iran has demonstrated deterrence, staved off two nuclear powers, dictated Israeli conduct over Lebanon, and the Islamic republic has survived. On top of that, Iran is likely now to achieve sanctions relief and the unfreezing of billions of dollars while still being able to enrich uranium. And with the toll system it initiated, while maintaining its ability to keep sending its own oil and gas out, Iran has been able to demonstrate strategic dominance over empire. The country has also inflicted billions of dollars of material damage on US military assets, damage it inflicted right up until the final round of attacks last week, and has forced US military forces to abandon their bases across the Middle East.

I’ve got no time for the petty complaints I’ve seen emerging from anti-imperialists about the deal Iran is about to sign. We’ve witnessed an undeniable, all-time anti-imperial win.

No near or medium-term US president will want to repeat Trump’s Iran misadventure, which means the country has staved off the threat of another imperial attack for some time, time it can use to manufacture thousands more of the missiles and drones which proved so effective.

Israel as always is the wildcard, but it cannot go it alone against Iran, and if it defies its handlers and reignites the war, it will be plunged into a crisis that would help speed-run the end of that diseased colony.

In so many ways, the imperium in 2026 is the outcome that Donald Trump always promised: the inability to reckon with a multi-polar world, the refusal to recognise the limits of American hard power and the rejection of soft power virtues. These pathologies have melded into a crisis for empire, a crisis that anyone who understands the necessity for the end of empire should welcome.

In 1980 the historian William Appleman Williams wrote a book about US imperialism titled Empire As A Way Of Life. While acknowledging that empire doesn’t end overnight, he also urged Americans to imagine a way out of their imperial idiom.

Despite the World Cup debacle and the Iran deal, US empire hasn’t ended. Empires end by a thousand cuts, not one decisive blow, something Iranian leaders understand well. But the US has taken on some deep gashes recently. And while we shouldn’t expect the end of imperial violence, because dying empires lash out, the last few months are a sign that US empire as a way of life is, mercifully and gloriously, coming to an end.

Now, as Williams wrote, it’s up to Americans to do some imagining about what comes next.

(A massive thank you to all my financial supporters. I’ll never put up a a paywall, but if you appreciate my writing consider buying me a coffee here or upgrading your subscription).

https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/16/american-power-is-collapsing/

 

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PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….